Reflections
by Aoi Hoshi Chan
Summary: This one came in a wave of..... well, a wave of something. I got chills writing it.


Disclaimer: If it was mine, would I be writing a FANfic?  
  
A/N: I've had this idea for awhile, and last night I sat down and told myself I was not going to bed until I finished. So I finished, because we all need our sleep. ^_^ This one's a little off-the-wall... but hey, aren't all good ones? I got goosebumps writing it, and I hope you get them too. (I've always wanted to write one that made people get goosebumps!)  
  
Reflection  
  
*  
  
Ba-BOOM!!!!!  
  
"WAAAAAAAH!"  
  
She was jerked from the dark, peaceful realm of sleep as the thunder crashed above the little house where her small family was sleeping. She held her breath. 'Please go back to sleep...' she willed the infant lying in the crib in the corner of the room. For a moment, all was silent...  
  
BOOM-CRACK!  
  
The lightning flashed, the thunder seemed to split the house in two, and the rain threw itself at the windows in a futile attempt to get inside. The frightened baby screamed all the louder.  
  
She sighed and swung her legs over the side of the bed, now fully awake. She sat up and shivered, wrapping her robe tighter around her frame. She stood, moving toward the baby's crib, but stopped in her tracks.  
  
She looked from her first son's worried expression to her second's face, mouth open in a wail, then to her bedroom door, which was standing ajar... Gohan must have come in without her noticing... of course, he was a demi- Saiyajin. It was to be expected that he was able to move as silently as a cat if he so wished... but the other, smaller, younger demi-Saiyajin did not wish to be silent. It was his wish to scream like a banshee for his mother.  
  
Gohan bounced his brother gently up and down, whispering in soft tones - yet Chichi could her the crack of maturity that was beginning in his voice. She unconsciously pressed a hand to her heart. 'My babies...' she thought with a sigh.  
  
The older demi-Saiyajin's head snapped in her direction at the small sound. He began to protest as Chichi moved to him, holding out her arms. "'Kaasan," he said, voice high and then dropping an octave in the middle of the word. "It's - it's okay, I - "  
  
"Go back to sleep, Gohan. You're a growing boy - you need your rest."  
  
"But..." The boy stood up straight suddenly, and Chichi realized with a pang to the heart that he was looking down on her. 'Was it that long ago when he was the size of Goten?'  
  
"I will take care of him, Gohan."  
  
"Are... are you sure, 'Kaasan?"  
  
"Hai." She placed a hand on his cheek. "Arigatou."  
  
He nodded and lay Goten in her arms, whose shrieks had been reduced to long, loud sobs. Gohan walked to the door and shut it softly behind him. As soon as it clicked into its frame, Chichi let out her breath and sat down in the old rocking chair, throat tight, intent on putting sweet dreams back into her precious little one's head.  
  
Thunder rolled menacingly, and Goten snuggled closer into his mother's embrace. Chichi reflexively held him tighter and began to rock back and forth, but her attention was elsewhere. She hummed a wordless lullaby that lacked any real structure and allowed her eyes to go out of focus.  
  
It was nights like these that she hated. During the day, she lived a normal- enough life, and at night she would sleep to regain enough energy to wake up and live a new day. To perform the duties bestowed on her when she became a mother... and the duties inherited when she became a wife.  
  
During the day, she was strong. She kept herself and her household in perfect order. Cleaning where cleaning was needed, organizing, re- organizing... and she would be so fatigued that she welcomed the night, when she could fall into a deep slumber and simply forget the nagging feelings buried in her memories.  
  
But the storms kept her awake. The rumbling thunder and the sporadic lightning flashes made the nasty little voices that were caged in the back of her mind all day long let themselves loose and take form. Chichi realized some time ago that these were her regrets; they started plaguing her nights about a week after the Cell games. She hated them, the voices, and she knew that often there was no rhyme or reason to what they said. But sometimes... sometimes the more she thought about what they said, the more sense they began to make. And though she herself knew she was strong, she hadn't the strength to force her mind free of them.  
  
A tear escaped her eye. The voices took up their chant. "Widow, widow, widow."  
  
Another. "Failure, failure, failure."  
  
Another. "Bad mother," the voices whispered with unexpected potency.  
  
Oh Kami, that one was the worst. So many things came back to that...  
  
She shivered. No matter how much of a stretch this was, she felt that the most irrational things could be brought back to her. Nobody else ever gave any hint that they knew this, but at night, she was positive that they were whispering behind their hands about her. Even the people she could never see blaming her - at night their eyes took on a reddish tint and their brows tilted downward in a wild exaggeration of their features. She could make her mind's eye see total blackness, but she could not for the life of her shake the voices... sometimes it was Bulma's voice, sometimes Krillen's, or even her own father's. But most of the time she heard her own voice, shrieking:  
  
"If you had let Gohan study and become a better fighter instead of studying all the time, maybe you wouldn't be a widow!"  
  
As if for dramatic effect, thunder banged and lightning flashed. Goten stirred in her arms and started to whimper. She stood and rocked him in her arms, pacing the floor and whispering to him in a voice that was much calmer than she felt.  
  
"Hush, baby... "Kaasan has you. Everything's okay." She walked to the window, water running in full-fledged streams down the outside of the pane. "It's just rain. "Kaasan won't let the storm hurt you. It will pass..." She held him up so he could see out, even though his eyes were squinted shut. "It's the same yard you played in today - just dark and wet. That's all." She hummed to him some more, hoping that and the steady tattoo of the rain on the roof would lull him back to sleep. Eventually his brows relaxed.  
  
She stood there by the window - how long, she didn't know - listening to the night sounds. The rain's drum was on a slow but steady decrescendo, the thunder gave a low, distant rumble as the storm moved further away, and her baby's breaths were quick and deep, tickling her arm. The lightning was reduced to small blinks, and no crash of thunder followed them. That "after rain" smell was apparent, even inside, and she filled her lungs with it. All was finally peaceful.  
  
"You're a bad mother,"came the taunting voices, echoing out of the black.  
  
Chichi gritted her teeth. Trust the silence to bring out the thoughts you worked to keep quiet. She started humming again.  
  
"You don't deserve children."  
  
"Yes I do," she whispered angrily, holding Goten tighter as if he might be snatched away at any given moment by things in the shadows.  
  
"You don't. Gohan was the first to respond to the baby's cries, not you, and it's your responsibility."  
  
She fought back. She'd brought up Gohan to be a gentleman, of course he came in. He was a concerned older brother!  
  
"That's what you say."  
  
She clenched her jaw and felt her throat constrict. They'd never spoken this long, and she wished they would go...  
  
"You see?"  
  
"I don't," she spoke out loud by accident. "I don't," she repeated, whispering. "I won't believe it. I refuse. I am a good mother. Gohan is a wonderful son."  
  
There was a pause. "He was never young."  
  
She had no retort for that one.  
  
Gohan was going to be the smartest, sweetest, most polite man when he grew up, Chichi had made sure of that long ago. But that was right - he had no childhood memories. No playing in the mud, no boo-boos she had to kiss better... it was textbooks. And facts being driven into his head.  
  
But wasn't he happy?  
  
She'd always supposed so. He had never complained, never tried to rebel... she had been a bit obsessive about his studies, but what mother wouldn't want their child to be intelligent?  
  
He was happy, but he'd never been allowed that carefree fun and the imagination that every child is born with - born needing to exercise... a tiny movement in he window made her snap out of her memories, and she looked at Goten.  
  
Well, no more. If she made that mistake with Gohan, she would not fail her second baby. Not to say he would grow up with no education - heaven forbid it. But she swore to herself then and there, gazing at his sweet, sleeping face - she would let Goten be who he would. And if his father could not be there to do it, she would teach him martial arts herself.  
  
She sighed... her baby boy. His already-wild black hair was so like his father's. She supposed some time ago that Goten was his going-away gift to her. Not so literally - how could he have known what would happen that day? - but she felt that the baby was the only part of him she had left.  
  
Fate worked out curiously, but like she knew, it was always for a reason. She couldn't see what was so right about them being apart like this, but she had learned that sometimes, you can't worry about things so much. All she knew to do was live for the next light, and go through life one day at a time, crossing bridges when she came to them... picking up the pieces, gluing them back together, and continuing on.  
  
Before she could stop it, a tear slipped from her eye and landed on Goten's forehead. Without so much as the slightest noise, his eyes snapped open.  
  
Chichi held her breath for a few seconds, willing him not to cry out. He didn't; rather, he looked out the window and let the moonlight reflect off his eyes, then turned his head in her direction and blinked in that innocent way that babies do. She managed a small smile, but there was something off about her face's reflection in his eyes and how his gaze was focused: it seemed almost beyond her.  
  
Then he did something very odd indeed:  
  
He giggled.  
  
In the same second, she gasped as she realized what was wrong with the face in his eyes.  
  
The reflection in his eyes wore a grin. The reflection in his eyes...was not hers.  
  
Chichi whirled around in time to see a little flicker of light blink off by Goten's crib.  
  
She was only dimly aware of her own heart pounding as she was too busy staring at her baby, who was smiling broadly and babbling, "Geeeeeeee, a plannnn, da! Dee da da da dada..."  
  
Chichi closed her open mouth as the wind rushed by the outside walls, carrying the light sound of laughter on it - but the laughter wasn't Goten's.  
  
She turned to the window and looked up in wonder at the now-clear night sky.  
  
She finally dared to whisper, "Goku?"  
  
Goten giggled again.  
  
*  
  
OWARI  
  
A/N: Well, how about it? ^_^ I wish the italics had worked... I followed the instructions on how to do them, but they were STILL messed up. Please review. It means a lot, it really does. I got two very nice ones yesterday and I was on a high from them for about three hours. At any rate, thanks at least for reading. Hope you liked it and that it made you squeal from sheer kawaii-ness. 


End file.
